Turk's oeuvre deals with issues of authenticity and identity, engaged with modernist and avant-garde debates surrounding the 'myth' of the artist and the 'authorship' of a work of art.

[1] In 1991, tutors at the Royal College of Art refused to present Gavin Turk with his postgraduate degree,[1] a decision based on his graduation exhibition, which was titled Cave, and consisted of a whitewashed studio space, containing a blue heritage plaque of the kind normally found on historic buildings, commemorating his own presence as a sculptor, stating "Gavin Turk worked here, 1989–1991".

[6] Turk's wide ranging practice often incorporates iconic images of figures taken from popular culture and art historical sources.

[2] Turk has appropriated recognisable elements from artists such as Jacques-Louis David, Yves Klein, Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, René Magritte, Alighiero Boetti, Robert Morris (artist), Jasper Johns and The Death of Marat painting by Jacques-Louis David.

Turk is perhaps the leading exponent of the painted bronze, and has cast objects from spent matches to worn paving slabs to discarded vehicle exhaust pipes.

[8] In May 2011, Turk's first large-scale, 12-metre public sculpture was unveiled between the One New Change City mall, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel, and St Paul's Cathedral.

[9] In September 2021, Gavin Turk made a piece called Piscio D'Artista whereby he canned his own urine and sold it for its weight in silver through Kickstarter, as an homage to Piero Manzoni's 1961 art piece Artist's Shit Merda D'Artista, in which Manzoni canned his own excrement and sold it for its weight in gold.

[13] In August 2014, Turk was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.

"[15] In 2007 Turk established, with his partner Deborah Curtis, The House of Fairy Tales, a children's arts charity based in London, that brings together hundreds of artists, performers, actors, writers and philosophers to deliver theatrical events, guides and exhibitions.

[16] In the summer of 2009, The House of Fairy Tales also staged The Long Weekend, a pop-up festival for all ages, hosted by Tate Modern.